This is how I went about it
Since I am living in the county of Stockholm, I started my research at the branch of Riksarkivet (The National Archives) in Arninge. It has a facility where genealogists can read microfilms containing information from all kinds of church archives from the whole country up to the year of 1895 as well as SCB:s (The Central Agency of Statistics) extracts from parish registers from the year of 1860.
My mother's family
A) I used my mother's known place and date of birth as a starting-point. Thus I looked up the Birth records of the relevant parish and year and then found my maternal grandparent's names and dates of birth, facts that in this case of course already were known. Please see example of Birth- and Christening records.
B) From there, I turned to the Catechism records from the parish and year that my mother was born and could from the birth dates of my maternal grandparents immediately find the family(it is quicker to search by date of birth than by name). In these records there was an abundance of information. By following the family forwards and backwards in the Catechism records, I got a good picture of when my maternal uncles and aunts where born and when they left home and so on. And for the future investigation there was another very important information, namely the entries of my grandparent's places of birth. Please see the example of Catechism records.
C) The next step was to search in the Birth records the year and in the parish my grandfather was born (I started with him) and in this way arrive at his parents names and dates of birth.
D) Then I went to the Catechism records of the parish the year of my grandfather's birth and found his parents and their places of birth. I also learned who my grandfather's siblings were, when he left home and where he went. If the name of the place was not recorded here, I could search in the Migration records and in this way follow him from one parish to the next.
In this way I continued with my grandfather's branch according to protocols C) and D) and when this was completed I started on my maternal grandmother's branch.I had already learned her place of birth under B). My mother's ancestors I could trace back to the year of 1725 on the male side and to the year of 1751 on the female side.
My father's family
Now I only had to apply the protocols A) to D) to my father's family, which has been documented to the year of 1732 on the male side and to the years around 1750 on the female side.
The library and the Swedish Archives of
The part of my research using material from the period before the year of 1860 I conducted using the library and the Swedish Archives of Information in Ramsele (SVAR).
information in Ramsele
This was done as follows. In the communal libraries there are special binders listing all Swedish church archives available on microfilm (please see example). They also have a few microfilm-viewers.From these listings I found out which microfilms I needed. I filled out a requisition-form ( please see example), which the library forwarded to SVAR. A few days later, the microfilms including an invoice arrived by mail to my home. Then, all it took was a walk to the library and a few hours in front of the microfilm-viewer. When I was done with the microfilms, they were sent back to SVAR. Once I was registered at SVAR, I could order the microfilms directly from them without having to go through the library. If you get your own microfilm-viewer you can more or less do your research at home at your own convenience.
Styled by Kjell Närkhammar June 2005.